Further Scattered Wintry Showers

Another rather chilly day across the UK with those cold westerly winds continuing to feed in scattered wintry showers, especially towards the north and west. Changes are on the way though with high pressure set to build in from the southwest later in the week, bringing south-westerly winds and much milder conditions to most parts with temperatures rising into the teens by the weekend in places.

On the whole it will be another bright and rather windy start to the day in many parts of the country this morning, but again there are plenty of showers running into northern and western regions, some of these on the heavy side with hail and thunder in places as well as falling as sleet and snow quite widely, with the showers also extending further south and east at times. Sunny spells and showers will be the main feature of the weather today, but as temperatures pick up any wintriness will gradually become confined to higher ground in the north. As always with showery set-ups, not everywhere will see them and some eastern and south-eastern districts will see a mostly dry day with some good sunny spells. Top temperatures will range from between 4°C and 7°C in the north and 6°C to 9°C in the south, feeling colder in the strong to gale force westerly winds which will become quite gusty at times.

It will be a cold night for many areas as clearing skies will allow temperatures to drop down close to or just below freezing with some frost and icy patches forming. However showers of rain, hail, sleet and snow will continue to affect many northern and western coastal regions, but even these will tend to become less frequent and lighter by the end of the night. Looking ahead to tomorrow and although there will continue to be a few showers around, many places will see a mostly dry day with sunny spells with temperatures a touch higher.

Spring Set To Bloom

Meteorological spring has started off on a chilly note for many parts of the country with a Polar Maritime airmass dominating bringing sunny spells and wintry showers to many areas along with widespread night frosts. Indeed the current Central England Temperature (CET) for March is running at over 1.5°C below normal. We are expecting this figure to recover as we go through the next week or so as much milder and more springlike conditions arrive.

During the next couple of days high pressure builds in from the southwest settling things down, especially towards southern parts of the country, but the northwest will always remain more changeable with Atlantic weather fronts bringing some rain and brisk winds from time to time. A positive North Atlantic Oscillation phase (where pressure is low over Greenland and Iceland whilst high pressure dominates to our south and southwest) will be in place meaning that we can expect mild south-westerly winds across our part of the world.

This means much milder weather is on the way for the end of the week and the weekend, and with high pressure in charge away from the northwest then some areas will see some very pleasant early spring weather, especially where the ever strengthening March sun breaks through the cloud. By the weekend we are expecting to see temperatures widely into the low teens with some places potentially seeing maximums of 16°C or 17°C, values that would be more common in May!

New Upgrades On Site

You might notice a few new things on the site today as we installed one of the largest patch and upgrades on the site for a few years on Metcheck. Many of the forecasts which you see on the site in the table form have been completely rewritten to not only look clearer and more readable with column headings for each day but also you can switch between desktop or mobile friendly view too.

The hobbies area of the site has also been rewritten allowing you to access your hobby forecasts for all your stored locations as well as more relevant weather variables for each hobby. You will also notice a new column on all the forecasts called %SNOW. This column shows you the likelihood of any precipitation falling as snow as opposed to rain for your location.

Behind the scenes there were over 20,000 lines of code which were rewritten to fix issues with land/sea forecast problems for some locations as well as international forecasts which have all been upgraded too. We hope you enjoy the changes and upgrades. Please do let us know if you would like to see any new features, changes or ideas on the site in time for the next major upgrade next month.